About Me

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

In a dramatic development, Bill Gates of Microsoft has taken over as the new Secretary-General of ISO. The outgoing Secretary-General, Illbeser Vile said that since most of the ISO members now belong to Microsoft, this is the most appropriate course of action.

Announcing his ascendancy at a press conference, Bill Gates justified the takeover of ISO. "Just as George Bush invaded Iraq due to WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), we have invaded ISO for approving a WMD (Weapon of Monopoly Destruction) called ODF (Open Document Format).

"For 26 years, we have been one step ahead of the world, constantly changing the file formats to suit our whims and fancies. Then one day we woke up to find that governments are embracing ODF. This had to be stopped."

Flicking the dandruff off his suit, Gates said that he has been itching for action ever since he stepped down as CEO of Microsoft. "I built two great monopolies in Windows and Office but it got kinda boring. I went off on a retreat, called all the M$ top-shots to the table and asked, "What's the next great monopoly that we can build?"

After three days of intense discussion, the M$ guys finally said, "Why even care to build products, when we can monopolize standards itself?"

Speaking to the press, Microsoft's VP for Interoperability, Wescroo U said, "Now we are back to where we belong - bang in the center of the universe! There was a time when the desktop world used to revolve around Microsoft. Then these pesky Internet startups like Yahoo, Google and Facebook turned up, making us looks like fuddy-duddies. Once we control the standards, we'll see what happens to the sky-high stock valuation of some of these companies."

Speaking to investors, Gates said that controlling ISO was the ultimate business model. "Now we don't even need to build products ("we were not very good at that anyway, just look at Vista!") Our new strategy is:

1) Drive adoption of our standards 2) File a thicket of patents around it3) Sit back and collect royalties or sue the buggers who don't pay up.

If the software business was a 80 percent margin business, this is a pure-cash play," Gates told salivating Wall-Street types. "Then why have so many employees?" asked a shiny, bald-headed guy in a pin-stripe suit. Promptly, 40,000 out of 50,000 Microsoft employees were fired, sending Microsoft stock into the stratosphere, where it finally overtook Google. The remaining 10,000 employees were reassigned to frantically create "standards" or file patents around them.

One Microsoft minion patented the English language. Everytime, the press asked a question in English, Microsoft was a few dollars richer. The Queen was reportedly furious about it but there she could do little about it since England is now the 51st state in the United States of America. Another Microsoft factotum patented the right-hand drive as well as the left-hand drive. Microsoft lawyers promptly scurried around halting traffic on the streets and collecting royalties from bewildered commuters, ably assisted by the traffic police, especially in the banana republics around the world. The only exceptions were the rebel outposts of China and India, which refused to toe the Microsoft line. To neutralise these pesky, non-Microsoft compliant countries, Gates and co, told investors that they will foment a war between the neighboring countries. "That will teach them how to comply," sniggered the man whose net worth was now half the GDP of the world.

"Is there no limit to your greed?" asked a reporter asked a journalist in an awed whisper. "No. Our aim is TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION(TM)," said Gates.

Watching this on his TV in the Oval Office, George Bush turned pale. Promptly, Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, whispered into the President's ears, "Don't worry sir. If nothing else stops them, we can try nuclear deterrence."

NOTE: The sequel to this is coming soon to a multiplex near you. Tickets will cost double since the movies will be encoded in Microsoft's proprietary WMA format.

ADDENDUM: Gates said that he is also going to unveil an April Fools Day joke on the world called called OOXML. However, since there are some well known date problems with the OOXML format, it will be unveiled only on April 2nd, 2008. Get ready for the Microsoft Tax!